19 percent college students think about suicide, are we killing our kids with pressure?

An 18 year old student wrote I cannot do JEE, I am a loser before taking her own life. She was 18. She had her whole life ahead of her. And she died feeling like a failure because she could not crack an exam. This is not one story. This is happening across India every single day. A study across 30 universities in 9 states found that almost 19 percent of college students had thought about suicide at least once in their lifetime. 19 percent. Nearly 1 in 5. Think about that. If you are in a classroom with 50 students, about 10 of them have thought about killing themselves. And nobody is talking about it. The pressure starts early. By class 6 or 7, parents are already comparing their kids with the neighbor's child who got 95 percent. By class 9, kids are being sent to coaching for JEE and NEET prep. At age 14. Schools rank students publicly and shame those who score low. Report cards are shared in front of the whole class. Low scorers are made to feel like they are worth nothing. Coaching centres sell the dream of IIT and AIIMS but never talk about what happens to the 99 percent who do not make it. They show you the 1 percent who got AIR under 100 and put them on hoardings. They never show you the thousands who went home broken. The mental health of Indian students is breaking down silently and nobody wants to talk about it. Mental health is still a taboo in India. If a kid says they are depressed, parents say it is just stress, study harder. If a kid says they cannot cope, they are told to stop making excuses. Schools do not have counsellors. Colleges do not have mental health support. The govt spends almost nothing on student mental health programs. Parents say they just want a good future for their kids. And I believe them. No parent wants their child to suffer. But is that push actually killing them? When you tell your kid that JEE is the only option, you are not motivating them, you are trapping them. When you compare them with Sharma ji ka beta, you are not inspiring them, you are crushing them. When you say your worth is your rank, you are telling them that they are worthless without a rank. India has one of the highest student suicide rates in the world. Over 13,000 students died by suicide in 2022 according to NCRB data. That is more than 35 students every day. 35 kids every day choosing death over this pressure. And the response from the govt? Silence. The response from schools? More tests. The response from coaching centres? More batches. The response from parents? More pressure. When will we wake up? When will we accept that an exam rank is not worth a child's life? Are parents pushing kids toward death or is the system worse?